Book Review: Lincoln’s Rise to Eloquence: How He Gained the Presidential Nomination

Lincoln’s Rise to Eloquence: How He Gained the Presidential Nomination. By D. Leigh Henson. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2024. Softcover, 271 pp. $30.00.

Kevin C. Donovan, Esq.

The pre-Civil War Abraham Lincoln sometimes is portrayed as a humorous story-telling rustic, albeit a good stump speaker who made the most of the opportunity to confront the great orator of his age, Stephen A. Douglas, during Lincoln’s losing 1858 campaign for the U.S. Senate. While, granted, he exhibited some flashes of oratorial skill—such as his “House Divided” speech accepting his senatorial nomination—Lincoln only grew into true eloquent greatness as president after the Civil War thrust it upon him. This is the stereotypical portrayal of the earlier years of a basically plain-spoken “Honest Abe.”

D. Leigh Henson, Professor Emeritus in the English Department of Missouri State University, presents a far different Lincoln in Lincoln’s Rise to Eloquence: How He Gained the Presidential Nomination. This Lincoln is one who at the earliest stages of his career both learned, and employed effectively, the classical rhetorical style of antiquity, one whose developing mastery of rhetoric was “vital to his success as a politician and statesman” (2).

Professor Henson’s delves deeply into the structure of Lincoln’s earliest major speeches, such as his 1837 speech in the Illinois Legislature regarding a state bank, and an 1838 speech on economics. In both orations Lincoln adhered closely to classical rhetorical principles. That Lincoln was cognizant of such principles and utilized them so early in his career must be an eye-opening experience for those who view Lincoln simply as a clever stump speaker. Henson explains how Lincoln acquired his self-taught rhetorical skills, including which books he used and his study of Daniel Webster’s speeches.

Lincoln, however, also is revealed as one persistently employing demagoguery in the form of emotional appeals and even personal attacks on opponents. In 1842 one attack was so piercing that the target challenged Lincoln to a duel.[1] Yet Lincoln continued using satire and other methods to undermine his opponents’ credibility and enhance his own.

Professor Henson shows that a favorite Lincoln tactic was to identify an adversary’s hypocrisy. For example, to counter Douglas’ criticism of him in the 1850s for resisting the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, Lincoln reached back to the time when years earlier, Douglas had praised President Andrew Jackson for refusing to accept a Supreme Court decision upholding the legality of the Bank of the United States. In that regard, Lincoln displayed remarkable research abilities, spending considerable time locating economic or historical facts to buttress his arguments.

As Henson charts Lincoln’s development as an orator addressing the evolving political issues of his day, he notes that woven throughout Lincoln’s speeches were two other themes: some policy affirmation backed by “implicit or explicit moral argumentation” (9), and the ability to tailor his appeal in a manner best calculated to persuade his particular audience. Henson makes clear that Lincoln did not speak simply to impress, but to achieve a goal. Lincoln elevated his language when facing a sophisticated audience, but used more home-spun words in other fora.

Lincoln also could blend his moral appeals with practicality, again to win over his audience. On this last point, Lincoln once used quite racist language to persuade a generally pro-slavery local audience that his moral position against the expansion of slavery was in the economic interests of those white citizens, to wit, “Sustain [those who favored slavery expansion] and Negro equality will be abundant, as every white laborer will have occasion to regret when he is elbowed from his plow or his anvil by slave [N-word]. Is it not rather our duty to make labor more respectable by preventing all black competition…?” (147) Indeed, this passage shows Lincoln the effective orator at his best/worst.

In Henson’s well-researched telling, Lincoln’s growing maturity as a speaker saw him progress from being a Whig party stalwart, a man who could be relied upon to give a good partisan oration, to one who proved, speech by speech, that he had the intellectual heft to address national issues. This led to Lincoln’s steady rise as a respected local, then state, and then national, leader of the new Republican Party.

Professor Henson’s book contributes much to our understanding of how Lincoln managed to reach the precipice of national political power in 1860. Henson’s study deftly combines thorough analysis of Lincoln’s developing oratorical techniques and the historical context of the occasions on which Lincoln delivered his texts, with an explanation of how, step by step, Lincoln grew in the estimation both of his parties’ leaders (Whig and Republican) and the public, primarily through his well-structured and effective spoken words. Professor Henson shows that in essence, Lincoln talked himself into the presidency.

[1] “Abraham Lincoln’s Duel: Broadswords and Banks,” Updated August 1, 2024, American Battlefield Trust, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/abraham-lincolns-duel.